Hive, Sweet Hive, part 8: The Slag Barons starting lineup.

Well, I just finished assembling the starting lineup of my Goliath gang, the Slag Barons:

   Boss: Maximus Beefcake

Champions: "Shredder" Jonns & Rogi "the Riveter"

Gangers: "Gunner" Bran, "the Gimp" and "Growler" Lugos

A rather small starting gang, but maybe, if I can find suitable miniatures in time, I will swap out "Shredder" Jonns for a Juve and a lightly equipped Ganger to get some more bodies in the lineup. But for now, this is it.

See you on the other end of the holidays!

Hive, Sweet Hive, part 7, Introducing the Slag Barons

Hi folks,

Over the past weekends I've been experimenting with the Airbrush a bit (nothing picture-worthy) and I've assembled and cleaned all the doors, barricades and various doodads from the new Necromunda box (Basically anything that isn't a Goliath or Escher miniature) with the intention of making some headway with them over the winter.

Today I've also started on the Goliaths. Initially because I wanted to get a feel for the new kits and build some minis. The Goliaths seemed a good start because I didn't care overly much about them.
Boy, has building them made me change my mind! The kit is great, lots of character. I'm liking the Goliaths more and more.
I wonder if I will have the same response to the Escher once I start building them? (With the great exception that I already like the Escher a lot, as the old Escher have been my most beloved sculpts of the Old Necromunda.)
Anyway, enough pre-amble, let me introduce the Slag Barons (warning, less-than serious/PC naming conventions ahead!):

  

Maximus Beefcake, the leader of the Slag Barons, this is in an relatively early stage of WIP.
He is based on the AoS Slaughterpriest that was a WD freebie, with a chestplate from a Khorne Blood-something, Goliath powerhammer, combi-pistol and head. The head has the largest Escher mohawk carefully shaved down and spliced into the Goliath noggin. I was originally planning to call him something along the lines of Lugos Ironbreaker or Facemauler, but while working on him, his insane size prompted me to jokingly call him " Maximus Beefcake" and that sort of stuck...

The core of the gang, from left to right "Shredder" Jonns, Boss Maximus Beefcake (now complete, save drilling of the gunbarrels) and Rogi " The Riveter".

The last figure I built tonight, still undecided on what weapons to give him (leaning towards Grenade launcher, brute cleaver/axe and maybe a stimm slug stash), all I know for certain is that they call him..." The Gimp":

I'm looking forwards to building more roided-up nutjobs soon...

See you next time!

Fresh blood for the Iron Kingdoms, and a "Hive, Sweet Hive" digression.

The past few weekends I've been off and on painting on expansions for my Iron Kingdoms roster of heroes (or murder-hobos, depending on your point of view).
The latest addition has been this Sword Knight, finished over the weekend:

Nothing too fancy, and a close match to the "official" Sword Knight colours. One of my few undisputably bright and shining heroes for the Iron Kingdoms.

I've also received my Necromunda box early last week and have been prepping the terrain for painting some point in the near future (I also took the opportunity to assemble a few pieces of the recently released 40K Objectives models):

This weekend I finished reading the rulebook, and with perfect timing, today my copy of Gang War arrived! So far, the new rules look promising and I'm looking forward to trying them out soon.

See you next time!

Hive, Sweet Hive, part 6: Feeling salty...

Well, it's the Necromunda release weekend, but mine hasn't arrived yet. :(

Still, not one to miss out on the fun, and having had a trial run of indoor airbrushing at a friends place yesterday, I decided to get some work done. I set up my own little ghetto spraypainting booth and set to.
Hence the saltiness:

The first of my Necromunda buildings, after receiving hairspray, salt and the first layer of colour.
This was shortly after a (late) lunch and I finished a bit after dinner, here are the results, as things are drying:

From here on, more traditional painting techniques will take over.

Lessons learned today:
-Vallejo Game Air Red Primer is a vicious nozzle-clogger...
-I need to find a darker, deeper yellow with good airbrush coverage. The one I used is a bit too pale to my tastes.
-Masking over salt is no fun... And I need tape what sticks a bit better, for this particular situation.
-I tried to cram too much work into one day, causing me to rush things, lose focus,  not enjoy myself and make errors. (The worst of which was spilling half a pot of airbrush cleaner. That really put a damper on my mood, as it wasn't my own, and kind of ruined the vibe of the work for me.)
Next time I should divide the work over an entire weekend.
-My airbrush area needs to be re-thought and rearranged, at this moment it is too cramped and uncomfortable to get into a work flow. Either the workbench is too high, or my chair too low. I need more table space to lay things out as well. Part of the cause for the spillage was that everything was crammed together and I was constantly moving things around to be able to work.
-I should have varnished after painting the base rust effects, here and there the salt didn't just take away the last layers of paint, but stripped right back to the bare surface. Touch-ups are needed.
-Airbrushing is actually rather quick (and fun, as long as I don't let myself get rushed and/or foolish).

I'll have a look at the scenery piece again in a few days, see what I think of it one  the fatigue and frustration of a monster airbrushing session (by my novice standards, as it's all a new proces, everything seems to take more thought, concentration and effort) have had time to fade away.
Then smack on some varnish to prevent the hairspray from lifting off as I continue painting this monster.

See you next time!

And another heroine steps onto the gaslit streets of the Iron Kingdoms

I decided to focus on just a single miniature today, again for the Iron Kingdoms, a mysterious, but well-to-do lady, hidden behind her gasmask:

The mini is, if I recall correcty, a steampunk lady from Black Cat Bases/Moonfleet. The colour scheme is an homage to a dear friend of mine, who's also into Victoriana and steampunk, her favorite colour is a deep purple...

See you next time!

New heroes enter the Iron Kingdoms

Last week I (re)started on some IKRPG miniatures. Today I had some time to finish them.
Here they are:

An Ironhead in a relatively light and unmodified suit of Steam Armor, a member of the Order of Illumination and finally, an Arcane Mechanik. No names yet, as these aren't intended for specific player characters (yet...).
The Ironhead is a Hasslefree miniature, the other two are from the Privateer Press Iron Kingdoms range.

Here's a few more views:

See you next time!

A bit of catching up

Whoop, I sort of forgot to post my progress over the past weekends... I messed up my back a bit, putting a bit of a damper on several activities, including the hobby. Luckily I'm on the mend, but the involuntary hiatus has caused a bit of a lack of focus. So, hobby-wise I'm all over the place at the moment.

The last thing I could do with the airbrush (at least until I get an indoor setup organised) before the weather turned to autumn, was to do a quick test of concept/practice run for the hairspray and salt weathering I intend to do on my Necromunda scenery:

 Lessons learned from this: I need to get/make a more varied and smaller mix of salt grains, as these chips are rather large and thus crude. Plus I will need to find a way to wash off the brine without damaging the non-waterproof parts of the terrain (the Pringles can and plaster are the ones I'm most worried about....). But all in all, a good test run.

 I also received some things. First is what may be the oddest thing I've ever bought for wargaming:

Three sets of animated LED fake eyelashes. Got them for a song out of China. The intent is to integrate them into some scenery for lighting effects as they're cheaper than most model lighting sets, and quite compact, making them easy to integrate. I have two sets of blue LEDs to use for a generator wall I've been wanting to build for my Space Hulk terrain for a long time.
The other one is a yellow light that should be ideal for Necromunda.

The second is Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago:

Haven't read it properly yet, just leafed through it, but it promises to be as much fun as it's predecessor!

So, where is the lack of focus, you ask?
Well, alongside building a tank for my DAK, I spontaneously started assembling/basing miniatures for IKRPG. None of them for characters I'm ever likely to play...

As I was down the IKRPG rabbit hole anyway, I might as well finish of some long-suffering WIP mini's. The leftmost and rightmost are official IKRPG miniatures, the central one in the steam armour is from Hasslefree Miniatures. Barely past the primer stage, these were the project for this weekend:

I'm happy with the progress I've made on these. All that's left to do is finish the metals and bases, eyes and gauges, as well as the hair on the two bareheaded ones (the central one will be redheaded, the right one a dark blonde). Hopefully I can finish them next weekend.

See you next time!

On the road to Tobruk

Once, a long time ago, I had plans to build a 20mm DAK army. Sadly this petered out, as it was just two of us interested in WWII gaming and we both had full plates. Then, a few months ago, a few friends got back into wargaming, initially just Gaslands, but soon WWII and the Battlegroup rules came up in conversation.  Now one friend is building a Russian Army, the second a British/Commonwealth army (I think) and Johan will attempt to build OPFOR for all of us. Which is only right, as he dragged us into this whole thing! :D (Plus he is mates with the maker of the game and the Plastic Soldier Company, who distribute it, as well as a load of kit for it.)

I have dug out my DAK stockpile as well. On the Dutch Battlegroup Facebook group, Johan has been running a monthly(ish) painting Challenge. In August this started with "Recce": Take two choices from the Recce section of your chosen Battlegroup theatre book and finish them before the end of the month.
Guess what I just finished? Only a month and a day late, for me that is making good time.
Last month's challenge, that has been extended for October as well is "Defences", I'll see if I can figure something out to make before the end of the month and maybe I'll get caught up with the challenges.

My recce choices were two SdKfz 222s, partly because I rather like the look of these little armoured cars, but also because I had these already built from when I last was active on my DAK...

Here they are:

I added in a Kubelwagen, as I already had it built, and used them as a test for my airbrush, to see how indercoating WWII vehicles would go with it. The final drybrush is a bit heavier that I would like, but I'm not complaining.
Here's some more piccies, as well as a shot including the other recon car I have painted:

Next in line are a couple of defences (still to decide which) and ofcourse the whole Necromunda project. I had to stop working on the scenery for that a bit, as I hurt my back last weekend and have to take a rest from larger/heavier items and working outside in the cold (where, at the moment, I need to do my airbrushing...). Hopefully I can pick that project up again soon.

See you next time!

Hive, Sweet Hive, part 5: Rust to rust.

Took a while, but I got to sit down with terrain and airbrush this weekend.
The original plan was to do the rust effects base layer Saturday so I could salt-weather the metal areas today. Unfortunately I spent most of Saturday fighting with mixing ratios and nozzle clogging (I'm fairly new to this whole airbrush thing...) and I couldn't get a mixture with a satisfying coverage without clogging constantly. So I packed things up instead.
This morning Sjors came over to lend me his Vallejo Air set, and things got off flying! It meant I didn't have to fight the mixing ratio and paint and could focus on getting used to the airbrush and getting things done instead! So today I finished the rust effects on the first terrain piece and the loose barriers and walkway. Next weekend I'll try the salt weathering and hopefully also get a start on painting the other parts of the terrain piece. Or I will keep the airbrush running and start the rust stage on the second piece as well. We'll see.

Here are the results  of today's efforts, after the airbrushing stage:

Nicely mottled, but a bit low in contrast and "pop". So I sponged on some extra orange "spot rust":

That's the ticket! Next time I work on this piece, a lot of the rust will likely be covered up again. But no matter, that's the point of the technique. Plus, as I'm not yet familiar with the technique so covering up more than I need with the rust effects at this point prevents me from accidentally uncovering bare primer during the salt weathering...

As I expect to be using a lot of wash on the Necromunda Terrain project, Sjors and I also spent some time mixing Nuln Oil and Agrax Earth surrogates, Luke's APS style.  I now have a small(-ish) jar of each, enough to thoroughly test it, and finish/drench a terrain piece or two. All in all, a good hobby-weekend!

See you next time!

Hive, sweet Hive, part 4, getting somewhere

Here's last weekends progress:

 Top platform/roadway built.

 Platforms and bridge added to the side, as well as extra detail. Sadly no real room for a full shanty house, I'll have to save that for a next terrain piece. Perhaps even make that the central theme of it...


Walkway testing, the magnets give a real strong grip and a positive connect when placing. No fear of these getting nudged and falling.

 Sturdy and stable, just the way I like it. The greatest risk will be minis sliding due to the (relatively) high angles I can connect these at.

 I even get a strong connection on the metal bottles of a Pringles can. This looks precarious, but is actually a quite stabile connection!

 The details on the other side of the Hiveway.

 The set of railings and "battlements" I built. Some of these are made from building scraps from the scenery pieces I've built. Realism, recycling and cleanup in one go! These are all magnetized to connect to the steel tape that also anchors the walkways.

 Like this. Now this setup may just be a bit excessive... ;-P

Primed the lot, hopefully paint can happen in the coming weekends. Looking forward to experimenting with the airbrush and (maybe) some weathering techniques.

See you next time!

Hive, sweet Hive, part 3: Prepwork

I felt a bit under the weather today, and needed to conserve energy and prepare for a job interview tomorrow as well. So no start on a next building just jet. Instead I attempted to do a few of the little "chores" that will come handy in the future.
I made a few Oyumari molds of some interesting features on various kits, that I may use on future buildings. I also tried out making a ladder and stairs, so I could work out any tricks or hiccups in the process before I committed to using them in a piece of terrain:

So far, so good, no major snags or problems, I just need to take the time to build them and be neat about it. I actually found the stairs somewhat relaxing to build. I need to play with the spacing a little bit, but it will grip the base of mini, so they won't fall of the stairs.

 Someone on a forum also asked for a close-up of my ladder platform prototype, so here it is:

 

See you next time!

Hive, sweet Hive, part 2

Work has progressed on building one.
I've adde more detail, in the form of piping and tubing coming out of the side as well as little scrap sheets of metal for repairs and such. Some greenstuff molded bits as well.
I've textured the Pringles tube to look nice and dirty and grungy. I also used patches of the same filler on parts of the floor and wall to get some nice texture variation. The rest was done with good old sand.

As you can see there's a bit of cover on the upper floor in this picture. That isn't permanently mounted... You see, I had a cunning plan and bought some steel tape to put along the edges of platforms. Magnets can grip on to this to mount barriers such as these or help keep bridges in place. This barrier is just a quick, nasty test case to see if things would work.
I'm glad to report they did. :D

I'm all out of primer, so I'll need to pick some up. Not knowing when a new job will start, I'll need to carefully ration my cash, so I can't really say when I can get new primer. Sucks a bit, buy hey, I've got plenty to build still!  I'm just trying to decide what I'll build next at the moment.

See you next time!

Hive, sweet Hive

Well, it was to be expected with the announced return of Necromund, that I'd dive straight in again...
While my Escher gang is still distinctly less painted than I'd like them to be I decided to start building terrain. I've only  ever played on the basic Necromunda cardboard and bulkhead terrain and I felt that needed to change. (Seeing, over the past few years, all the beautiful Necromunda/Inq28 terrain being built by hobbyists online, most notably the Yggdrassiliume board  by Neil101 and the Sump Town/Curse of the Alabaster by Shibboleth, have made me covet a nicely modelled terrain set of my own. Who said envy can't be a positive emotion? ;P )

So, with the wife away for the weekend, I dragged all my raw materials out of storage and set to. 
Here are the results halfway through day one:

Since taking these pictures around noon, I've added texture to the platforms, added hoses and tubes to the silo, some scattered debris/garbage to the ground and textured the silo to give it a nice rusty, grungy and nasty appearance. Tomorrow will bring more detailing and texturing the floor, with maybe a start on building two.
I'm planning to store as much of this terrain inside a few Pappis boxes, and to that end I've marked the dimensions of the bottom of a Pappis box on my sheet of basing materials twice. Whenever I cut a base, I will try to stay within these lines.  Any gaps and leftovers can be used for basing scatter terrain.


Ofcourse this terrain can be used for more than just Necromunda. I could use it for regular 40K (just use a bit less of it, on a larger table), Kill Team or Shadow War: Armageddon. There's the option of Inquisimunda/Inq28 ont it.  Smaller terrain items and scatter pieces, I could also use for Space Hulk (and vice versa, the SH tunnel sections can also be used for Necromunda, I "just" need to finish those too...). And ofcourse it could also see use in other Post-Apocalyptic settings.


I'm stoked and plan to spend as much of my spare time (at least until a new job kicks in) building more terrain. Hopefully the hive will rise quickly! ( So my Genestealer Cult can infect it...) 

See you next time!

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 5

Well, the final two hills have been finished.
I had some colour matching issues. As I said in a previous post my basecoat paint had run out. I couldn't find a replacement so I found a close match. I had also forgotten that I had added a fair bit of yellow to the mix last time. So these hills came out a bit more ruddy on the mid tones as well as a bit more chalky on the highlights.


I'm not too bothered as it still falls within the same natural range of colours.
Here they are, along with a dune and rocky outcrop I had done earlier for comparison:

I now have a core Gaslands/DAK terrain set, I just need to build specific items for both games/settings. But that is for a later date, I think, right now my mind is on Necromunda, and I think I'll be building terrain for that the coming weeks....

See you next time!

Mutual annihilation

We had another game of Gaslands tonight.

I took the opportunity to put all my WIP desert terrain on the table and pad it a bit with some of my old Gorkamorka terrain pieces. It worked and played well!
The game was very entertaining tonight, as it ended in total annihilation of all participants:

The end came when the final two surviving cars each rode up opposite sides of the same dune ridge, and rammed each other on its peak. One car was destroyed, but it was loaded with missiles, oil canisters and molotovs. Naturally it promptly exploded, totally shredding the other car!
We all had a good laugh about that one!

See you next time!

Weekend good, monday bad...

This weekend has been a busy one!

Replaced my son's bed. He had a creaky, wobbly metal loft bed and that has been disassembled and brought to the skip. He now has a nice and sturdy wooden bed, again loft model so he can have his desk underneath.

I also made some nice progress on the two rocky hills for Gaslands/WWII Afrika. I fixed the damage/thin spots on the filler layer and glued on the rocks and sand:

After that I sealed and primed them with two coats of a slightly watered down mix of PVA and black paint:

And at that point I ran into some problems:
My brown paint for this terrain has almost run out.  I couldn't finish basecoating the hills this sunday. And it's a bottle of craft paint I bought nearly a decade ago (2009) and I have no idea if the local arts and crafts store(s) still sell it! Now I may need to find a similarly tinted alternative. Sadly the local arts and craft shops are only open when I'm at work. If that hiccup hadn't occurred I might have gotten these hills painted. Oh well, no deadline, no worries. Though I would have liked to have them available for our game this Thursday.

As a diversion during drying time for the paint layers, I dug out my boxes of scenery materials with the intent of going through them to find materials and ideas for Necromunda, as I'm getting psyched to build terrain for that. This is my stash, minus specialist materials like XPS, foamboard, mdf and plaster and filler and such:

Sadly, piling this stack from the garage to the living room was I got to do this weekend. The problems with the paint for the terrain (exacerbated by my overthinning the paint in attempt to stretch it to at least finish these hills) cost me more time than I thought. As wel as my back and shoulders being knackered and sore from stress and poor seating at work (which luckily will soon be a past thing), meant I had to opt for having the occasional lie down on the couch, instead of maniacally rummaging through these boxes.
Oh, well, there is always next weekend, or the weekend after that. Necromunda won't return until November.

Speaking of work related aches, todat the boss dropped a little bomb: Originally the project I'm currently working in was supposed to last until October 1st, with maybe the chance of another extension. Today we got the news that the project will terminate sooner, to be precise: coming friday! As of  Monday, my job will cease to exist. Some choice words were quietly muttered, naturally. Of course this didn't help the aforementioned back aches.... It means I spent most of the evening applying for unemployment benefits (hoping I don't need them, but better safe than sorry) and frantically sending out more job applications. It also meant that today me and my teammates were repeatedly encountering the following error:

So, my goal for the coming week is ride out the work week with my head and professionalism held high, try and not let the dour mood at work infect my current hobby drive and good mood at home and find a new job as fast as I can. Wish me luck!

See you next time!